


Meeting Mycroft

by Shayvaalski



Series: Minding Moriarty [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drabble, Ficlet, Gen, Indian Character, Mycroft-centric, POC Moran, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-03
Updated: 2012-03-03
Packaged: 2017-11-01 00:53:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/350186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shayvaalski/pseuds/Shayvaalski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One Holmes isn't quite as good as another, but after Sherlock falls, Moriarty will take what he can get.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meeting Mycroft

“Enjoying being the  _only_  child? Mummy’s favorite again?” Jim asks, rolling the ice around his glass. He has been there for long enough to lower the level of the bottle at least two fingers. Mycroft is almost sure the man cannot get drunk, that he is already so far lost in madness he cannot drop down any further, that he exists permanently in a state of drunken oblivion where nothing in the world is not a good idea. 

He pops an icecube into his mouth, crunches down. Mycroft, who is still carrying his coat and umbrella, makes the kind of face one usually sees on very prim old women when someone speaks too loudly. He’s not exactly surprised to see Moriarty, but he’s not pleased, either. 

“Shouldn’t you be lying in a shallow grave somewhere?” 

Jim is examining his nails, head tipped back and slightly to one side. He hasn’t shaved recently but his hair is impeccable, his suit freshly cleaned. “I did give it a try, but it was just so  _boring_ , Mycroft. I couldn’t stay dead. Not with you still mucking about. Alive.” And here he looks up, takes another drink, shudders just a little. His face changes, darkens, mouth gone blank and veins standing out at his temples. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten our little chats, sweetheart.”

“You’re not here to kill me,” says Mycroft, putting his briefcase down and reaching for the bottle. Moriarty’s glass shatters on the wall behind his head. “Then what,” he hisses, a cobra whose prey is just out of striking distance, and suddenly there is a gun in his hands, “precisely, am I doing?”

“Don’t be so  _dramatic_ , Jim.” He pours, takes a sip to steady himself, looks over the rim and down the barrel. “Put that down. If you wanted me dead, your  _dear_ little Sebastian—at least, I assume that’s who the rather hulking Indian sitting in the car outside is—would have already shot me.” He swirls the whiskey in his glass. It’s a little too warm for his tastes, but the ice has melted in its bucket.

“Sit down and be quiet. Do try not to break any more of my glasses, they belonged to my mother.” Mycroft sets the tumbler down and the two of them lock eyes. Jim’s drop first, and he slumps into the chair, arms splayed over the sides. Mycroft shoves the broken glass into the corner with one foot, making a mental note to have the spot gone with a damp cloth over by his housekeeper, and goes to the sideboard. There are, he seems to remember, biscuits here somewhere, and Jim doesn’t look like he’s been eating. 

His back is to the other man, but he’s not worried about a knife in his kidneys or a bullet in his brain, because he’s worked it out. There is almost nothing about Moriarty that reminds him of his brother; there is very little of him that will remind Jim of Sherlock.

But there is enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for jackmarlowe.
> 
> Update 9/5/14—upon re-reading this before I linked it on tumblr, I thought, Why does this Sebastian need to be white? 
> 
> And then I thought, he doesn't, and I like my slowly-growing headcanon of a half-Indian Sebastian so much, son of a British diplomat who married a Tamil woman, Eton and Oxford educated and yet still read as lower-class, who has a complicated relationship to imperialism and therefore Mycroft, and would follow Moriarty to the ends of the earth to take Britain to pieces. SO I CHANGED IT.


End file.
